Historic Firearms and Mankind – Academic and Cultural Politics in Germany

[Matchlock]

Since the German Reunification in 1990, state and museum funds for all cultural belongings in common, and especially for the purchase of antique 'military'/arsenal firearms - no matter how old and important they may be - , have been crudely cut back. Military firearms are officially condemned as possibly raising aggressive feelings with museum visitors viewing them.

The situation has aggravated, especially after those rampages acted by youngsters started. At Columbine high-school in Colorado, two senior students murdered 12 of their fellow students and one teacher in 1999. Moreover, they injured 24 students, with three other people being injured while attempting to escape. Eventually, the killers committed suicide.
The German cultural authorities feel that those antique historical firearms may incite young people to go mad and act in killing frenzy (German: Amoklauf). In 2009, at Winnenden high-school, Southern Germany, and in a murder-suicide act, a 17-year old student shot 16 people imcluding himself.

Actually, it was Swiss! cultural politicians who started that anti-historical firearms campaign in the 1990's. Consequently, large and important Swiss firearms collections have been banned from public exhibition and packed into the storage rooms. This happened to the large famous weapons collection at the Historisches Museum Berne, to the ample collections of the Swiss Landesmuseum Zurich and the Altes Zeughaus Solothurn, as well as to a other Swiss state museums.

And it was the same sad story with German museums as well. By the early 1990's, almost all firearms have been withdrawn from the exhibition rooms of such important museums as the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum Munich, the Deutsches Historisches Museum/Altes Zeughaus Berlin or the wonderful arsenal collection at the Stadtmuseum/Zeughaus Munich - to name just a few of them. Most antique firearms, 300 to 600 years old, have even been withdrawn from the huge exhibition halls of the Bayrisches Armeemuseum Ingolstadt, only 30 km next to my home.
They will never be on viewing again for at least the next 30 years!

On the other hand, crossbows, edged weapons like swords and, of course, all kinds of armor, are still officially regarded as noble and gallant (German: edel), knightly or even kingly, and are not primarily defined as means of war, by both the official political and cultural Swiss and German authorities and the museums. Consequently, they are allowed to stay on exhibition, while antique firearms, even - or maybe especially - when they are the earliest ever made, like all guns in my collection, which holds not one single item that was manufactured after ca. 1720! Even the most antique firearms are officially condemned - politically, morally and culturally, and are regarded as endangering peaceful life and politics.

The story is as sad as it is true. Most museum curators will look down in a highly suspicious way on any scholar asking to be granted access and do research on firearms and their accouterments. Many of those people, especially the so-called generation 1968, and of course female curators, even react personally and blatantly disgusted. Various times, I have been asked how I can manage to combine my academic interest in these items with my conscience, and have been affronted as being a firearms freak who is gaga about guns. Of course I have fired original 400 year-old muskets; is just part of my comprehensive research, and believe me: firing a matchlock musket that is 1.67 m long overall and weighs 1o kgs is an incomparable experience which leaves a lasting impression.

Everybody who really knows me and both my personal and political serious creed realizes that I actually love and defend peace, as well as the rights of all political persecutees and refugees, that I respect all living beings, and especially humans, no matter what color their skin may be or what nation belong to. I have always fought for the good fight, and animal rights. I love and defend all animals, and especially cats, from the bottom of my heart!
Not only am I a Christian and believe in God, I also graduated, among others, in Theology from Regensburg University in 1982.

But I also love historical arsenal arms, just for their cultural, historical, technical, art historical and social importance; and they clearly document the fact that there are both sides to every medal, as well as every human being is, and will always be, giftet with both good and evil - the reverse of the medal.






Best,
Michael Trömner